How can a system be judged with highly processed, non acoustic music?

op

its a hobby for pleasure, so we all do what we like

i personally agree with you, but many many others listen to other types of music with no ’natural’ or original sonic reference (other than the original recording) - but they too are allowed to pursue pleasure/beauty/excitement, so whatever music reproduction they find pleasurable is what it is... as well as the journey of how they get there

We all are free, happily...

But the fact that any audio journey is a free journey dont make it a meaningful one for all of us in the same way....

Capricious taste or habits, or sound obsession, are not acoustic and psycho-acoustic science....

Then underlining our freedom is not an argument against the  recognition of NATURAL instrument timbre here in acoustic and musical judgement nor against the importance of this recognition in musical and acoustic experience....

This the point of the OP argument ...






«Sometimes when you go one step further you are no more free, except like in free fall, this is why informed freedom is the way»-Anonymus Smith

«Even Spartacus informed himself that he was a slave before rebelling»-Groucho Marx 🤓

How can a system be judged with highly processed, non acoustic music?

It's pretty simple. Listen to some highly processed, non acoustic music. Judge it. I'm doing it right now. My judgement? It sounds good...

Feel free to judge your system playing minimally processed acoustic music.

If you care about how vocals sound, you care about acoustic music.

It's pretty simple. Listen to some highly processed, non acoustic music. Judge it. I'm doing it right now. My judgement? It sounds good...

Feel free to judge your system playing minimally processed acoustic music.

It seems you confuse taste with acoustic science here...

You dont get the point: our brain are linked to recognise voice TIMBRE for million years and a natural piano timbre we know already what it is for all our life, we can separate here the artefact aspect of the sound and his natural aspect ... But how are we supposed to  know how would be the sound of any ELECTRICALLY processsed instrument? Where do you separate the "artefact" from the  "natural"  in the  timbre of an electronical instrument?

 A moog synthetiser...A theramin.... An electrical guitar....It is way more difficult here to separate what pertain to an artefact and what pertain to the natural....The border between the 2 dont absolutely exist....